Finally bollards on Adelaide as cycling trips soar

I got wind from the Twitter yesterday that contractors were going to start installing bollards on Adelaide last night so I made a quick detour this morning. As predicted it appeared that most of the bollards have now been installed between Bathurst and Spadina (video)

I was blown away by the shear numbers of people already biking along it. And the bollards seemed to be doing their job quite well: discouraging errant car blocking and providing some comfort to cyclists. It's nice to do a happy story now and then.

As I was taking a video of me getting lapped by cyclists rushing off to work, I saw cycling planner Lukasz Pawlowski chatting next to someone from the iconic Rotblott's Discount Warehouse. I stopped to talk to Lukasz and look in awe at the waves of cyclists passing us.

A few weeks ago, Lukasz mentioned, the Cycling Unit had done a count on Adelaide that pegged the daily number of bike trips at about 1700. And looked like it has increased even more since then. In their 2010 count at Spadina and Adelaide that number was 640. That's a roughly 300% percent increase for a bike lane pilot that only goes to Simcoe for now and up until today didn't have any protection.

Compare that to roughly 4000 daily trips for Harbord in both directions (number from Lukasz). Lukasz said he was aware there was a lot of latent demand along this corridor but was still surprised to see just how many people and how quickly people took up the route.

In my informal counts I've seen how cycling numbers were higher on Queen than on Bloor Street. As much as I'd also like to have bike lanes on Bloor, we've often glossed over the importance of bike lanes along Queen or King, perhaps because of the difficulty of installing them. But providing a continuous east-west route that incorporates Richmond and Adelaide is a huge release valve.

I encourage Jared of Cycle Toronto to take the mayoral candidates out for a ride along Adelaide and Richmond during rush hour so they can grasp just how important these protected bike lanes are to a downtown network.